Hello Kay, My first job out of grad school (ecology and evolution) was advising biology majors at a large public university. The vast majority were pre-med or otherwise health focused. They had a requirement to take at least one ecology course, and for those that were focused on health careers, this was often their only ecology course. However, several of the ecology courses did have a health-related course title (parasites, medicine, disease, physiology, etc) and were often extremely popular among bio majors (some would say too popular given the ratio of seats to students in many public universities). This could suggest either a slight refocus of an existing course, or perhaps a new ecology course that could very easily teach many core ecology concepts with health related examples. I think many people on this list serv would agree that knowledge of some core concepts in ecology and evolution would be very useful among healthcare professionals, so I think this is a reasonable action to consider. Good luck!
Best, David David Mellor <https://osf.io/qthsf/> Center for Open Science <http://centerforopenscience.org/> @EvoMellor <https://twitter.com/EvoMellor> On Mon, Feb 1, 2016 at 11:23 AM, Kay Shenoy <kay.yellowt...@gmail.com> wrote: > Does anybody have ideas on how to promote Ecology among Biology > undergraduates? We are finding that Biology majors are increasingly > focused on health-care fields; many students consider Ecology > “unimportant” for their future careers, and it is not addressed in the > MCAT exams, so they give it a low priority. How does one increase > enrollment in Ecology courses, and particularly in schools that do not > have dedicated Ecology departments? Any thoughts would be welcome! >
